My Speech to the AGM of the City of Leicester Conservatives [check against delivery]
Thank you, Chair.
I will start with two personal announcements if I may. The first is that since your last AGM I have moved to live in the City of Leicester, which is why i am here not just as your Police and Crime Commissioner, but also as the Ward Rep for Castle Ward. The second is that I have unfortunately broken my arm tripping over in the city. Fortunately it was a crack not a massive break and I am now recovering.
Over the past year I have noticed a number of things. The first is what an effective adn hard working MP Shivani is proving to be. I have an exceptionally positive relationship with her and her office.
The other thing I have noticed this past year is that this Labour Government led by Sir Keir Starmer is the Government of Broken Promises. Almost everything it says it is going to do, it abandons before it comes to fruition.
As your Police and Crime Commissioner, I know this only too well. The Labour manifesto at the last election proudly declared that it would introduce “13,000 additional Neighbourhood Officers”. This was so clearly a pale imitation of the previous commitment to recruit an additional 20,000 police officers that in itself it shows the lack of clear thinking and vision by the Labour Party on law and order.
Barely had the votes been counted when the promise of 13,000 additional Neighbourhood Officers was changed to be 13,000 additional Neighbourhood Officers and staff or volunteers working on neighbourhood issues. That would be still welcome, but is not what was promised. Since then the promise has been changed again. Now the total of 13,000 will include not just additional officers and staff, but also those moved from other duties. So a police officer moved from motorway patrols to neighbourhood policing will count as an “additional officer”.
Even that is proving to be an empty promise. The recent Spending Review allocated so little money to the police that even this massively watered down promise is going to be virtually impossible to deliver.
Talking of money. Do you recall that National Insurance increase? The one that is driving so many small businesses into bankruptcy? It has also had an impact on the public sector. My budget pays the National Insurance on police and staff wages. So an increase in National Insurance transfers money from the police budget to the Treasury for Rachel Reeves to spend on whatever is Keir Starmer’s pet project this week – Mauritius and the Chagos Islands, perhaps.
But good news! Home Secretary Yvette Cooper promised me that the Home Office would reimburse Leicestershire Police for the NI increase. That never happened – another broken promise.
Like the promise that the Home Office would pay for whatever pay rise they agreed to pay to police officers. Don’t get me wrong, having seen our officers at work I think that they deserve every penny of their pay rise. But when it came, there was no additional money from the Home Office to pay for it. So we had to let some staff go, and ditch some projects that we were looking forward to implementing. All because of a broken promise by Kier Starmer’s government.
Sticking to money, there is the thorny issue of the way that the total police budget is divided up between different police forces – the Police Funding Formula, as it is known. This is done using a formula that was introduced by the Labour government of Tony Blair. Perhaps back then it made sense, but it doesn’t now. The formula took into account such things as the total population of a police force area, the mileage of roads to be patrolled, the number of violent crimes and so forth.
But things have changed since the 2000s. The population of some areas has risen, that of others has fallen. Crime in some areas has gone up, elsewhere it has fallen. Here in Leicester the population has grown dramatically. Not only has it grown, but it has become very much more diverse in terms of culture, languages spoken and other factors. That makes policing Leicester move complex and more expensive, but that it is not reflected in the Funding Formula.
And while agricultural crime does not directly affect Leicester, the huge surge in violent, organised criminal gangs operating in rural areas does have an impact. Russia is desperate for specialist high-tech agricultural gear due to the sanctions imposed due to the Ukraine War – and they are willing to pay top prices for stolen equipment. And serious organised crime gangs are targeting farms across Leicestershire and Rutland to supply that demand. We have introduced a specialist rural crime unit to tackled this. More expense not seen in the aging Funding Formula.
If the Funding Formula were modernised to reflect actual need then Leicestershire Police would have several million more pounds. Labour promised to do this, but have done nothing.
Bizarrely, given all these broken promises, Keir Starmer’s Labour government have found time to do things that they never promised to do at all. Read their general election manifesto. Local government reorganisation? Not there. Paying Mauritius billions to annex the Chagos Islands. Not there. Allowing abortion up to the moment of birth? Not there. Euthanasia? Not there.
No government in British history has done so much damage to our country in such a short period of time.
Keir Starmer leads the Government of Broken Promises. He should be ashamed of himself.
